LAS VEGAS – With tens of thousands of souls in this city for the National Finals Rodeo, Jess Pope runs into friends from time to time during his business venture.
He was reacquainted with an old ally during Monday’s fifth go-round: Frontier Rodeo’s Gun Fire. It was the seventh meeting between the two titans, and they’ve made their special relationship well known, especially inside the Thomas and Mack Center.
This is the second straight year the two personalities have been dance partners at the NFR, and they put on a show for 17,000 fans. Their last meeting didn’t go according to plan. The powerful bucksin got the better of Pope, and while he finished the ride, he suffered a low score that halted him from winning the NFR average title for a third straight time.
“I was really excited to have that horse,” said Pope, who matched moves with the 2022 Bareback Horse of the Year for 90 points Monday night to finish third in the round and collect $20,104. “It was nice to have some revenge on her in the Thomas and Mack after the 10th round last year.”
Their most recent score was 11.5 points better than the last, but it’s what Pope was expecting when he saw the random draw Sunday night.
“It feels really good,” said Pope, the 2022 world champion from Waverly, Kansas. “That horse is really, really special. She’s a one-of-a-kind mare. The more you scratch on her in the back fence, the better she is, so I made sure to get out there early so I could get up under her chin.
“She just loves being petted on. I’ve got a good relationship with the Frontier crew, and she’s a very special animal to me.”
He has placed in three of five rounds and has earned more than $73,000 during his first week in Las Vegas. He has a cumulative score of 427 points on five rides and is tied for second place in the aggregate race with Texan Cole Franks; they trail Dean Thompson by two and a half points. Pope is fifth in the world standings with $241,363.
“To be able to ride for this kind of money on an animal like that is freaking awesome,” he said. “I didn’t get to watch much of it, but what I did see, it was an awesome bareback riding tonight. I looked down through that list, and everybody had a shot to win. It didn’t matter who you were; it was anybody’s ballgame.”
Make no bones about it, this is a business trip for Pope. Over his five straight qualifications, he’s earned just shy of $900,000 at the NFR alone, and he has five nights remaining on this year’s finale.
“It’s so awesome,” Pope said. “It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of. I feel great. The last couple of times I’ve got on, I’ve had just a little bit of a stinger issue in my free arm, which is very flexible, very doable to keep riding with. I feel great going into the second half of this and excited to see what happens after Round 10.”